Two Roads I Cannot Travel

It's human nature.

When bad, difficult, or debilitating things happen, we start looking for the root cause. If we know why it happened, we might be able to undo whatever caused it. It's humanity at its finest:  problem-solving, helping ourselves, commanding our own destinies. Or so we think.

What happens when that tactic doesn't work? We keep trying to solve the puzzle. We start going down roads we were never meant to travel. The two roads I keep finding myself on are the roads of guilt and anxiety.

Guilt....When I finally realized I can't stop the disease, I started to spiral into depression and self-deprecation, and occasionally I still end up on this road. What did I do to make this happen? How could I have avoided it? Am I being punished for something? What if I had never done XYZ? Is God mad at me?

Believe me, I have asked every one of those questions, and, in my own human frailty, could not find an answer. The only recourse I have is to believe what God says in His Word. (I'm sure God doesn't want to be my only, or last, recourse, but I'm just being real here!) My sins are forgiven, my debt is paid (I John 1:9), He's forgotten my past and removed it from Himself as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). And besides all that, God doesn't work that way. He doesn't reach back years into your past to find a sin big enough to suddenly zap you unexpectedly with Parkinson's Disease. His disciplines are always timely, never late. His disciplines are always for the purpose of bringing us back into fellowship with Him, not just to punish wrong-doing.

When you can't find a reason, look to His Word.

The second road I find myself travelling is anxiety. Dealing with a degenerative disease, I start asking pointless questions like: What's ahead of me? How can I stop it? Who will take care of me? How many productive, functional years do I have left? Some days I just can't stop going down that road in my mind.

I'm there at some point almost every week. I saw someone in a wheelchair at Cracker Barrel who had Parkinson's, and had clearly lost all ability to function. I know it's going to be me someday and I can't stop my mind from taking me there. Another person with Parkinson's Disease lost his balance and fell in our lobby at the credit union, with some fairly serious injuries resulting from his fall. How long before that happens to me?

God's Word has an answer for that, too. If He watches over the lilies of the field, and the birds of the air, how much more will he watch over me? (Matthew 5:25-34). Alternatives to my worst case scenarios? 1) He's able to perform miracles, 2) we might find a cure, 3) I might be able to make progress reducing my symptoms, or 4) any number of other solutions could surface that might resolve my situation for the better. Simply put, He's in charge, not me. If the God who stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee decides He wants to heal me, He certainly has the ability to do it (Matthew 8:23-27). If the God who spoke all of creation into existence decides to speak healing to my body, nothing can stop Him.

But in the meantime, while I wait and try to stay out of the spiral, I wake up to another day with a limp, slowness, a tremor, loss of balance, foggy brain, and fatigue. Some days I am sure I'm getting worse, not better.

I want to speak healing and recovery. I want to believe. I want to find purpose for my situation. I want to wake up with hope every single day.

Don't look back. It's pointless because I can't change the past. Don't look forward. It's useless because I can't control the future. Travel today's road today. Leave yesterday's road behind and leave tomorrow's road for another day.

And now... just because I love this poem and because it very slightly relates to this post, here is "The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two road diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.